Sober Celebrities and Stars who are Alcohol-Free
Wondering which celebrities are sober and whether any of your favorite actors, musicians and models live alcohol-free?
You might be surprised by how many famous people have decided to quit drinking.
Sober celebrities include the likes of Drew Barrymore, Kelly Ripa, J Lo, Jada Pinkett Smith, Natalie Portman, Eva Mendes, Kristin Davis, Jessica Simpson, Blake Lively, Chrissy Tiegen, Anne Hathaway, Rob Lowe, Chris Martin, Jason Bateman, Bradley Cooper, John Mayer, Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, Daniel Radcliffe, Shakira, Kit Harington, Zac Effron, Russel Brand, Robert Downey Jr, David Beckham, Colin Farrell, Glennon Doyle, Brené Brown, Rosario Dawson, Lucy Hale, Mackelmore, Christina Ricci, John Stamos, Matthew Perry, Nicole Ritchie, Tobey Maguire, John Mulaney, Will Arnett, Josh Brolin, Abby Wambach,Gabby Bernstien, Kate Moss, Jennifer Hudson, Kim Kardashian, Tyra Banks, Dax Shepard, Denzel Washington, Ryan Adams, Samuel Jackson, Rumer Willis, Lily Allen, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Sarah Silverman, Michael Bublé, Calvin Harris, James Franco, Shania Twain, Pharrell Williams, Andy Murray, Leona Lewis, John Hamm, Alec Baldwin, Elle Mcpherson, Naomi Campbell, Joe Manganiello, Brad Paisley, Anthony Hopkins, Charlie Sheen, Dane Cooke, Dennis Rodman, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Jack and Kelly Osbourne, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jane Lynch, Jim Carrey, Jo Dee Messina, Jason Isbell, Stephen King, Tim Allen, Wil Wheaton, Eliza Dushku, John Travolta, Edie Falco, Patricia Heaton, Margo Price, Kendrick Lamar, Kristen Johnston, Elizabeth Vargas, Jason Biggs, Gillian Jacobs, 50 Cent, Kim Cattrall, Tyler – The Creator, Katy Perry, Cristiano Ronaldo, Anthony Kiedis, Ben Harper, Cheryl Burke, Lena Dunham, Eminem, Moby, Ringo Starr, Steven Tyler, Tom Hardy, Zendaya, Lana Del Rey, Leona Lewis, Amber Valleta + More…
Personally, I love it when a celebrity comes out to say they’ve quit drinking or are questioning the role that alcohol is playing in their lives, because it normalizes living alcohol-free and disrupts the narrative that you have to drink to live an exciting, fun and glamorous life.
Sober celebrities who talk about their decision to stop drinking can start a larger conversation about alcohol and its role in our lives.
When you stop drinking it can feel lonely at times, especially in the early days when you might not know a lot of sober people, so knowing that cool, glamorous, famous people have also decided to ditch the booze can help you feel less alone.
Tune into this episode to listen to hear:
- What Jada Pinkett Smith said to herself after realizing she was drinking two bottles of wine on the couch every night
- How Chrissy Tiegen felt when she hit 50 days alcohol-free
- Why J Lo credits her beautiful skin and looking younger than her years to staying away from alcohol
- How a 6 day hangover prompted John Mayer to evaluate the risk/reward of drinking and decided that alcohol has the worst odds ever
- Why Anne Hathaway stopped drinking “for 18 years” because she didn’t love the way she drinks or the hangovers that followed
- How a month alcohol-free with girlfriends led Kelly Ripa to give up drinking completely because she looked better, felt better and loved life without hangovers
- Why Jennifer Garner worried about her drinking during the pandemic
- What prompted Bradley Cooper to stop drinking at age 29
- Why Drew Barrymore stopped drinking when she realized that drinking was no longer serving her in her life
- Why Bella Hadid doesn’t feel the need to drink alcohol now because she knows how it will affect her at 3am, waking up with horrible anxiety
- How drinking left Jessica Simpson feeling exhausted
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ABOUT THE HELLO SOMEDAY PODCAST
The Hello Someday Podcast helps busy and successful women build a life they love without alcohol. Host Casey McGuire Davidson, a certified life coach and creator of The 30-Day Guide to Quitting Drinking, brings together her experience of quitting drinking while navigating work and motherhood, along with the voices of experts in personal development, self-care, addiction and recovery and self-improvement.
Whether you know you want to stop drinking and live an alcohol free life, are sober curious, or are in recovery this podcast is for you.
In each episode Casey will share the tried and true secrets of how to drink less and live more.
Learn how to let go of alcohol as a coping mechanism, how to shift your mindset about sobriety and change your drinking habits, how to create healthy routines to cope with anxiety, people pleasing and perfectionism, the importance of self-care in early sobriety, and why you don’t need to be an alcoholic to live an alcohol free life.
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS PODCAST INTERVIEW
Sober Celebrities
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
drinking, alcohol, sober, stopped, celebrity, people, life, feel, talked, Glennon, Dry January, Judy Greer, sobriety, incredible, listening, kids, drank, day, night, big, years
SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson
00:02
Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.
In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.
Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a bus, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.
I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.
Alright, today we are talking about Sober Celebrities. And it’s a little bit different than the solo episodes I’ve done in the past.
So, in the past, I’ve talked about a bunch of subjects like the tools you need in your sober toolkit, or my story about drinking and why I quit. I’ve talked about boredom in sobriety, and what you can do about it to make life without alcohol fun. And I’ve gone into the principles of habit change, and how to apply them to quitting drinking and what to do in your first week without alcohol. But personally, I think just finding out what famous people have stopped drinking is really fun and interesting, because when I was getting sober, when I was going back and forth about whether I wanted to drink or didn’t want to drink, especially in the early days, I really liked figuring out which celebrities out there, musicians used to drink and didn’t anymore or just never drank and were still super cool and fun and inspiring and doing really interesting things with their lives.
I didn’t know a lot of people in my real life who had quit drinking, and I had a lot of fears and limiting beliefs about what would happen to my social life without alcohol. So, knowing that these cool, clamorous, famous people didn’t drink was something that gave me hope. It was also kind of fun. And in the early days, I’ve talked about having sober littermates which is the group of people who kind of stopped drinking right around the same period of time that you do and my girlfriends who were also on the alcohol free path who were having a bad day or really struggling with this not drinking thing or board. We used to text each other pictures of famous hot sober guys when we were having a bad day because I gotta tell you, there is really nothing that a picture of shirtless Rob Lowe can’t make better and Bradley Cooper looking really good. Or Jason Bateman, Robert Downey Jr. or Tim McGraw, Caitlyn Farrell, or Denzel Washington. I gotta tell you, when you’re in a bad mood about not drinking a picture, those guys saying, Hey, girl, sober looks good on you, can really lift you up.
So, I know that when a celebrity comes out to say that they’ve stopped drinking, or have struggled with alcohol, or even questioning the role that alcohol is playing in their lives, or that they’re taking an extended break to look at it, they start a conversation, they bring awareness and normalizes the idea that even people who look like they have it all together may wake up hungover or feeling like shit, or not remembering the night before and they’re starting to say, hey, he might be this substance that is all around us and addictive. It makes me feel less alone. And it may just be because of who I am and the people I know being 46. But a lot of the women I hear talking about not drinking now or questioning their drinking or women around my age.
So, I was excited to see that Drew Barrymore recently came out and said she hasn’t had a drink in 2 years. And Anne Hathaway talking about how her hangovers would sometime last 5 days. So, she’s decided to stop drinking, at least while her kid is still living at home until they go after College.
Adele talked with Oprah about her relationship with alcohol. And Chrissy Tegan, Kelly Ripa, and Jessica Simpson have been talking about their relationship with alcohol, their struggles and stopping drinking, the conversation is growing. And for so many years, we’ve been bombarded with messages about what alcohol does for you. And now, the conversation is shifting to, What does alcohol do to you.
And for me, I know it’s helpful to hear from people who haven’t had the biggest bottoms. Because I didn’t have that huge bottom. I wasn’t physically addicted, I didn’t have any major consequences from my drinking other than feeling like garbage most of the time, and not remembering parts of the night and my anxiety being off the chart and wondering every night whether I had enough or being annoyed if my husband had a glass of the bottle of wine, because then I wouldn’t have, “enough” for that night.
So, hearing people who’ve gone to jail, or had DUIs or had to go to rehab to me, I love and then beyond inspired by the ways in which they have removed alcohol from their lives and seen their lives and careers flourish. I mean, Robert Downey Jr. is just incredible to me. And I love hearing everything he has to say about why life is better without alcohol, but I couldn’t relate to it that much.
So, hearing women my age, talk about how alcohol was a problem for them. Famous women, celebrity women, that does really, really helped me to say, okay, they are doing the same questioning that I’m doing. Maybe it isn’t this glamorized substance that works for everyone. Maybe you can remove it from your life and be a lot happier.
So, this episode is really fun for me. And I kind of got to tell you why. Because I have a long history of really enjoying diving into following celebrity stuff. I was always one who loved celebrity memoirs, and it was not always sanctioned or admired or encouraged by my parents.
So, I think I’ve mentioned before that my parents are diplomats, they were with the American embassies overseas, and they kind of specialize in working in third world countries. So, we spent a lot of time in Africa and South America. And they did a really, really good work that helped a lot of people. But when I was growing up in a teenager, I was not really into food policy and Zambia, or the politics of Guinea Bissau. I was a girl who was into the red carpet and watching what people wore and the ins and outs of celebrity relationships. So, when I would go home to visit my parents, when they were overseas, they used to get five newspapers a day. So, they would pour over them every day, they would highlight them, they would cut out articles, and one of the five newspapers but the least respected in our family was the USA Today. And I would only read the Lifestyle section of the USA Today, literally the most frivolous news of the most frivolous newspaper and my dad used to tease me so much. And my mom was the same way.
After college, she came to visit me in DC. We were driving around in my car, and it was five o’clock. And she was trying to find NPR on the radio. And I was not that into it. And she looked at me and was like, Oh, for God’s sakes, Casey be informed and programmed NPR into my radio stations favorites. So, I get it now as an adult, NPR and the New York Times. I mean, I listened to that all the time. But I also love celebrity stuff.
So, when I was in my 20s, I worked at Getty Images, which is a huge Global Photography Company. They do images that you see in like, all the advertisements, and billboards, and magazines, but they also have a really big Editorial Photography Department that I worked in for a long time. I worked in Product Marketing for our editorial division, which was News and Sports and Entertainment. And Getty had really incredible photographers that went over to war zones all over the world and taking pictures of disasters around the world and following big political stories. And we were the official photographers for the Olympics and did all the photography for like, the World Cup and my mom loved telling all her friends about what I did. She loved that we were selling images, incredible images to newspapers, and she would send me images that Getty Images photographers had taken that just were really incredible around the world. And then I got promoted. And I moved to be the Director of Product Marketing for our Global Entertainment Imagery Job. And it was the very first time that I had gotten paid to do something that I literally would have done in all of my free time.
Anyway, so for work, I got to subscribe to 5 Entertainment Magazines a week. I subscribed to People, US Weekly Entertainment, weekly. Okay, magazine in touch, I got to click over to Perez Hilton to look at the trending news, you know, something happened, we had to provide red carpet imagery for that for like our biggest customers, which were Entertainment Weekly, and Entertainment Tonight and Extra TV. So, I needed to know what was going on, right what the latest breaking stories were about various celebrities. But so, I got to go on press Health Net lunch, and someone would come over to talk to me and I wouldn’t even need to hide my tabs and click away. And I got to go to Sundance Film Festival in Toronto Film Festival, where we had celebrity portrait studios, and I got to go to Fashion Week. So, that was without a doubt the coolest job that I’ve ever had. And it may have been a job where I should have gotten an early peek of that maybe I needed to reevaluate my relationship with drinking because I also vividly remember throwing up in the bathroom of the Getty Images LA office, when we were supposed to go meet the Director of Photography to do a customer visit at Entertainment Tonight, an extra TV and I was trying to throw up really quietly in the bathroom because I was so hungover. And basically, my main concern on that trip that I was so excited to go on before I flew down there, was just to not throw up in the car because I was like holy shit, I’m gonna lose my job. And I was like sweaty.
So anyway, even at that time, I clearly should have seen a pattern with my drinking. But that’s not the point. The point is I love following this celebrity stuff. And in early sobriety, it really helped me. I mean, I drove to work listening to Rob Lowe’s biographies, stories, I only tell my friends, and it was fascinating and interesting. And I got all the gossip from his ST almost fire days and the West Wing. But I also got to hear about what drinking was like for him and why he decided to quit and why he loves life without alcohol.
I remember listening to NPR and hearing just a beautiful and inspiring story and interview with Jason Isbell, who’s a singer songwriter, and it was about him releasing his album, Southeastern. And that album is all about when he decided to stop drinking and his fears about when he got rid of the bad parts. What would the good parts be like, and would he be able to be a singer would people love him, and would his fans buy him? And it was incredible because all the emotions he was talking about were things that I was feeling too. I used to go up to rock my daughter Lila to sleep and be listening to Elizabeth Vargas, his memoir, on audiobook called Between Breaths and her story about drinking and not drinking.
And I loved listening to Abby Wambach’s memoir, Forward. She is an incredible Soccer Legend. She is an Olympic gold medalist and a Women’s World Cup champion. And she also got a DUI and struggled with alcohol and had to quit and decided to not drink anymore. And so that part of the story was fascinating too. If you don’t know Abby, she is also Glennon Doyle’s wife and she does the podcast with Glennon Doyle. We can do hard things, and Glen and sister. And Glennon wrote Untamed, which is an incredible book and carry on warrior and love warrior and Glennon is also sober. I mean, lots of incredible women have quit drinking.
If you’re listening to this episode and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit. The Sobriety Starter Kit is an online self study, sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step-by-step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one-on-one coaching. And The Sobriety Starter Kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it, when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time. This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step-by-step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life. You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better, you’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course.
And I have to believe that one of the major reasons that they can do such good work and do big things is because they’re no longer struggling with drinking and hangovers and operating kind of half power. I mean, I know alcohol is glamorized and pushed on us and shown in TV shows and movies. And when you watch a lot of those TV shows and movies, it’s often depicted that life without alcohol is this big bottom or people talking about how sad their lives were in church basements. But I gotta tell you, I really feel that Sober is the New Black. I mean, it is being Sober Curious is cool. And it’s a new conversation. Because right now, when I was thinking about this and reading about this, there are literally more sober celebrities than I could possibly cover in this podcast. They include Drew Barrymore, Kelly riphah, JLo, and Jada Pinkett Smith, Natalie Portman, Eva Mendez, Kristin Davis and Jessica Simpson. Blake Lively is alcohol free, so is Chrissy Tegan and Anne Hathaway. Rob Lowe, Chris Martin, Jason Bateman, Bradley Cooper, John Mayer, Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck are sober. So are Keith Urban and Tim McGraw. And Daniel Radcliffe. Shakira kid Harrington Zac Efron, Russell Brand, Robert Downey, Jr, David Beckham, Colin Farrell, Glennon Doyle and Brené Brown. Rosario Dawson and Lucy Hale Macklemore Christina Ricci, John Stamos and Matthew Perry, Nicole Richie, Tobey Maguire, John Malini and will our net Josh Brolin and Abby Wambach. Gabby Bernstein, Kate Moss, Jennifer Hudson and Kim Kardashian. Tyra Banks, Dax Shepard, Denzel Washington, Ryan Adams and Samuel L. Jackson. Rumer Willis, Lily Allen, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, Sarah Silverman, Michael Bublé, a. Calvin Harris and James Franco. They’re Shanaya Twain and for Al Williams, Andy Murray and Leona Lewis, Jon Hamm and Alec Baldwin, Elle Macpherson and Naomi Campbell, Brad Paisley, Anthony Hopkins, Charlie Sheen, Dane Cook, Dennis Rodman, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Jack and Kelly Osborne, Jamie Lee Curtis Jane Lynch, Jim Carrey, Jody Mussina, Jason Isabel and Stephen King, Tim Allen, Wil Wheaton, Eliza Dushku. And John Travolta. There’s Edie Falco Patricia Heaton, Margo price, Kendrick Lamar, Kristen Johnson and Elizabeth Vargas. Jason Biggs Gillian Jacobs 50 cent. Kim Katrell. Tyler the Creator, Katy Perry, Ben Harper and Cheryl Burke. Lena Dunham. Mm, Eminem, Moby and Ringo Starr, Steven Tyler, Tom Hardy, Zendaya Lana Del Rey, Leona Lewis, Amber Valetta, and so many more.
If you think you are alone in deciding that alcohol is not working in your life, and you want to try a period of time without alcohol, you are absolutely not alone.
So, Chrissy Teigan talked about in December 2020, that she was four weeks sober, while responding to a fans comments on a dancing video. And she said that one month ago, on her birthday, she got the book quit like a woman written by Holly Whittaker, from her doctor friend, and said, I was done making an asset of myself in front of people. She said, I’m still embarrassed, I was tired of de drinking and feeling like shit by six, not being able to sleep. I have been sober ever since. Six months, no alcohol she posted. I have no idea what I’m doing, honestly. But I do know a few things. Now I have endless energy, way less anxiety, no more benzos. And I’m happier and more present than ever. It’s pretty cool. I look forward to having my full body reset after one year, and then reevaluating to see my new hopes and wishes for the future. Let’s go.
And I did want to mention that as anyone listening to this knows a path to reevaluating your relationship with drinking a path of deciding that it’s not working for you and trying to stop and getting some time and then deciding that you actually don’t need alcohol and aren’t going back that takes time. So, I when I’m talking about people on this podcast, I’m talking about the information that’s available now, at this point in time. And I’m not necessarily endorsing any of these celebrities. I think some of them are amazing. I think some of them I like some of what they do, but not other things. So, I’m just sharing the conversation. And what different famous people have said about alcohol and why they’re taking a break from it have stopped or have quit forever.
So, one of the really interesting conversations that I read about was Jennifer Garner. And she went on an Instagram live with her friend, actress that she worked with on 13 going on 30, Judy Greer. And I think they’re both really cool. And one of the reasons they went on there was, Jennifer Garner said she recently spent 70 days sober. And Judy Greer didn’t drink 420 days. And they share their tips and their thoughts on experimenting with sobriety. And this, again, is something that I think every woman can relate to every woman, especially my age, and it’s a slippery slope. And I love that people are starting to talk about this openly. So, Jennifer Garner said she hardly drank at all during high school in college and began to dig deeper into why when she found herself reaching for wine a lot during the pandemic. She said that it was when she had kids. And she felt like she wanted that reward at the end of the night. And she would have that little sip of alcohol and it felt like she had earned it and she deserved it. Jennifer Garner said, it feels like it’s become part of a code among moms. Like your wine. Oh my gosh, she must be done now. But she said as you kids start to get older people start having it in the afternoon. And Judy Greer talked about how she tried cutting back on her alcohol intake in January when she and her husband realized how much they’ve been drinking together during the pandemic. So, they started dry January. And Judy Greer enjoyed it so much that she continued for full 120 days. And she said, when we did Dry January, I decided to keep going because I felt happy again all the time. I didn’t feel out of control. I felt really grounded. I could cope with everything that was coming up much more easily.
And Adele also recently talked with Oprah about needing to do work on herself. She said she was going through everything a couple years ago she was going through a divorce. And she said she was probably keeping the alcohol industry alive. And she stopped her thinking when she realized she had a lot of work to do on herself. And she needed to do a lot of things to keep herself centered. Adele also talked about how her relationship with alcohol was complicated because of her dad. She talked about how his drinking had affected their relationship and said that her dad’s absolute lack of presence and effort, she finally understood that it was the alcohol, and she was able to make peace with her father. But Adele said giving up alcohol really helped her find peace with herself. But it wasn’t easy.
So, one of my favorites, sober celebrities is Bradley Cooper. And he stopped drinking when he was 29. And he said, Being sober helps with his career a great deal. He said, I realized I wasn’t going to live up to my potential. If I was drinking, and it scared the hell out of him. He thought, Wow, I’m going to ruin my life, I’m really going to ruin it. Bradley Cooper talked about how he drank because he was so concerned with what other people thought of him how he was going to come across how he would survive the day. He always felt like an outsider. But when he realized that his drinking was actually going to hurt his ability to succeed in life, that’s when he needed to stop.
You probably know that Brad Pitt stopped drinking. He’s one of the most famous people in the world. He announced in GQ in 2017, that he was just boozing too much. He said, it became a problem. And I’m really happy. It’s been half a year now, which is bittersweet. But I’ve got my feelings at my fingertips. Again, I think that’s part of the human challenge. You either deny them all of your life, or you answer them and evolve. And he said that it wasn’t easy. Brad said, truthfully, I could drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka. I was a professional, I was good at his drinking habits. But he stopped for the reason that he didn’t want to live that way anymore.
I mean, John Mayer also stopped drinking. And he said that he thanks Drake’s for helping him get sober. Mayer talked about in 2018, in the cover story for Complex magazine, that he hadn’t had a drink since strikes 30th birthday party two years before, he said he made a fool of himself at the party and suffered a six day hangover. And he asked himself, okay, John, what percentage of your potential do you want to have? Because if you say like 60% of your potential, and you’d like to spend the other 40%, having fun, that’s fine. But what percentage is available to you? And what would you like to make happen? And he thought, I want 100%. And he says, of alcohol, if you look at drinking, the way you would look at anything else, its risk reward, you have to think about what am I giving up versus what I’m getting. And he said, with alcohol, it’s some of the worst odds that ever existed. And that completely resonated with me. Because, you know, when I was drinking, I would say that it made like, three hours of my life feel better, right? Those hours when I was drinking between like, 6 and 9:00 p.m. But it may be other 21 hours of my life so much worse, right? By the end of the night, I couldn’t sometimes remember the show I watched I would, “fall asleep” on the couch, a.k.a. pass out and my husband couldn’t wake me up. I’d wake up at 3:00 a.m., which is brutal anxiety and be unable to fall back to sleep, I would have bloodshot eyes and watery eyes in the morning and a headache. When I was trying to put on my makeup, I would feel so tired, and also jittery all day at work. And my emotions would be all over the place. Everything was so close to the surface. And I would tell myself, I wouldn’t drink that night. And then by 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. I’d be rationalizing why it was no big deal and trying to figure out whether I could stop for a bottle of wine before I had to pick up my kids from daycare. So, when John Mayer talks about that risk reward, what am I giving up versus what I’m getting? Yeah, those odds are pretty crappy, right? If I describe that whole day, and I have those three hours of like zoning out and getting that dopamine hit, once you’ve realized that you go so low from that, it’s just not worth it anymore.
And I’m not saying it’s easy, because it is really hard to stop drinking, and that’s why support is so critical. But when you look at it objectively, you’re like why am I doing this to myself. I mean, Daniel Radcliffe, who you may know from the Harry Potter movies. I know because I’m currently reading all the Harry Potter books with my seven year old daughter at that time. He said that he hasn’t drank since 2010. He said he became so reliant on alcohol to enjoy stuff that he frequently blacked out. He said there was a few years when he was just so enamored with the idea of living famous person’s lifestyle that really isn’t suited to him. And he is much happier without alcohol in his life.
Anne Hathaway stopped drinking in 2018 and said she didn’t put a drink down because drinking was a problem. But she put it down because of the way she drinks leads her to have hangovers. And those were the problem. She said her last hangover, it lasted for 5 days. And she said a stage in her life, where she doesn’t have time for hangover. So, she is taking drinking off the table until her kid is out of the house.
Ben Affleck, you might not also quit drinking. He said, I want my kids to know there’s no shame in getting help when you need it, and to be a source of strength. For anyone out there who needs help but is afraid to take the first step.
One person I love is Blake Lively, and she just doesn’t drink. She says it’s something that she genuinely doesn’t have a desire for it, which I completely don’t get, but have to say that her life looks pretty great without alcohol.
And I mentioned Brené Brown. I’m a huge fan of hers and her work. She’s actually been sober for 26 years and said that the romance of wine clubs and Scotch tastings and a few beers while we watch the game, she said it’s dead for her. She her husband still drinks like a 12 pack over the course of an entire year. But she recognizes that that drinking culture is a great cover for pain. I already mentioned Chrissie Teigan, but one of the things I love that she said when she was 50 days sober, felt very much like the way I drank, right? She said, it doesn’t serve her in any way. She doesn’t get more fun, she doesn’t dance, she doesn’t get relaxed. She said, I get sick, I fall asleep. And I wake up sick, having missed what was probably a really fun night. And I feel that as well.
Dax Shepard is an actor, but he’s also the host of one of my favorite podcasts that if you haven’t listened to armchair expert, you totally should. Dax talks a lot about sobriety and has other celebrities on who don’t drink, but it’s also just a really hysterical podcast with great conversations. But Dax said he wouldn’t have his family without sobriety. First and foremost, he’s married to Kristen Bell, and he said Kristen would have never signed up for the old version of me.
Denzel Washington is sober since the end of 2014. And he said, when you’re toasted or drunk, you need a day or two to recover, you get a hangover. So that’s like, two days out of your life. And he said, I don’t have time to waste. Let’s say there’s 365 days in the year. So, in 10 years, that’s 3650. How many days do you want to waste?
Oh, McPherson, who is this gorgeous model. I remember when I was growing up, stop drinking on her 40th birthday. She said in my 40s, I started to focus on health and wellness, I stopped drinking and taking any drugs.
And Ewan McGregor, who’s an actor who I personally think is really hot. And he was one of the guys we like texted around pictures of. He said that he stopped drinking in 2001 because he drank too much. And it made him really unhappy. So, he just thought, I won’t drink and then I can be happy. I mean, there are so many more. I literally couldn’t go through them all.
Jane Lynch, who I love from Glee and everything else she’s ever been into. She stopped drinking in 1992 and said she had just reached her limit she knew in her mind and her body and her spirit. She had just had it.
Jason Biggs from American Pie is sober.
Jessica Simpson stopped drinking in 2017. She said, When I finally said I need help, it was like that little girl found her calling again in life. She found direction that was to walk straight forward with no fear. Jessica said, honesty is hard, but it’s the most rewarding thing we have and getting to the other side of it is beautiful.
Jim Carrey stopped drinking and said if you aren’t in the moment If you’re either looking forward to uncertainty or back to pain and regret, he says, I‘m very serious about no alcohol and no drugs. Life is too beautiful.
John Stamos from Full House. He stopped drinking 7 years ago. And he said some of his drinking was really fun. And some of it got to be really unhealthy. But he never could have been a father the way he wants to be if he kept drinking.
Keith Urban, who’s married to Nicole Kidman, stopped drinking in 2007. He said that he didn’t seem able to stop drinking.
And Kelly Ripa, who I loved, stopped drinking three years ago. She said I did a sober month with all of my girlfriends. We did it together. And I just never went back. It wasn’t even a thought process. It felt great. I felt like I looked great. I felt like I didn’t feel hungover. I just didn’t really feel the need or desire to go back to it. It wasn’t a choice. I just thought Yeah, I guess I don’t drink anymore.
Kid Harrington from Game of Thrones. Stop drinking.
Kristin Davis, who is in the Sex in the City TV show and movies. She stopped drinking way back in 1987. When she was pretty young. She said she gets sent a ton of cosmos and bars, but she never drinks them. She doesn’t mess with it. She says people say couldn’t you just have one glass of champagne? And she says no. Why risk it?
Lana Del Rey, who’s a singer songwriter. She said, I was a big drinker. I would drink every day I would drink alone. I knew it was a problem when I liked it more than I liked doing anything else.
Lily Allen stopped drinking three years ago.
Michael Boulais, who’s a singer songwriter said he stopped everything. No more booze, no more smoking and he started going to the gym.
Naomi Campbell, who was a big model back in the day right with Oh, McPherson, said that she stopped drinking. And in the seven years before she stopped, it was especially bad. She said during that time, she avoided looking in the mirror because she didn’t like the person who was looking back at her. She said there were times when she thought she wouldn’t survive, but she stopped drinking in 2005 so many years ago.
Natalie Portman is an actress I absolutely adore. She’s gorgeous and smart. And she said that she’s been sober since her college year she said she didn’t get flat out drunk until she went to college. But then she realized she needed to stop.
Rob Lowe has actually been sober for 32 years. He talks about it a lot. And if you’re really interested in his story, his book stories I only tell my friends is one of my favorite in the world.
Rosario Dawson, who’s an actress also stopped drinking in 2020. She said, I want to have as much clarity and be intentional about every day and so that’s why she doesn’t drink seriously. I could go through this all day long.
There are so many there’s Russell Brand, Sarah Silverman, Shania Twain, Tim McGraw, who I actually love his story. He’s married to Faith Hill. He said that he drank too much for a while and he knew that, and his kids were getting older. And he said, he starts thinking about his mortality a bit.
You start thinking about what your life’s going to be like, when your kids are gone, and you have grandkids and all of that went through his mind, and he decided to stop drinking.
And Jada Pinkett Smith is one that what she said about stop drinking really resonated with me too. She said, she’s actually been sober for almost 20 years, and she looks incredible, but she did it after finding herself drinking two bottles of wine on the couch each night and she was like a Jada. I think we have a problem.
Eva Mendez also stopped drinking. She stopped in 2008 and have been sober ever since. And she said she’s proud of the people who have the determination and the fearlessness to actually go face their demons and feel better and get better.
Patricia Heaton of everybody loves Freeman in the middle. She talked about why she decided to stop drinking in an interview and said that her drinking had just become automatic during the evenings, and she realized at her son’s birthday party, that they had seen her drinking for six hours continuously and it was a moment of humiliation that made her decide to get help.
Lily Allen posted on Instagram in 2021 holding a chip that said she was clean and serene for 18 months with the caption would recommend and there are so many more people I could talk about Macklemore Josh Brolin.
But the one I want to end on is Drew Barrymore because you She’s actually the exact same age that I am. And I’ve just always loved her. And in December 2021, so very recently, she went on the CBS show the morning and said that she had stopped drinking 2 and a half years ago, after realizing it was just not something that served her in her life.
So, if you’re listening to this, and it is something that is not serving you in your life, if any of these stories or people inspire you to take a break from our con, see how you feel, please do it.
You are gonna feel better. And you are not alone. I mean, look at this. All the cool kids are quitting drinking, so I think you should give it a try. And I hope you had fun with this episode.
So thank you for coming on here. I couldn’t appreciate it more.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Hello Someday Podcast. If you’re interested in learning more about me or the work I do or accessing free resources and guides to help you build a life you love without alcohol, please visit hellosomedaycoaching.com. And I would be so grateful if you would take a few minutes to rate and review this podcast so that more women can find it and join the conversation about drinking less and living more.